His techniques included using rudimentary models and painstaking shot-by-shot animation to bring his films to life. Harryhausen's work set a broad standard for Hollywood special effects before the era of Jurassic Park, Transformers, and The Avengers. His final special effects work was on 1981's Clash of the Titans, but Harryhausen also appeared in front of the camera, playing a bar patron in Beverly Hills Cop III and voicing the polar bear cub in Elf.

Celebrities weighed in on Twitter Tuesday about Harryhausen's death. Seth Green, whose show Robot Chicken uses the old-school stop-motion animation technique, wrote: "Thank you Ray Harryhausen for influencing us more than you could ever know."